After just a week of heart-stirring popular defiance has Iran’s new-found spirit of liberty already been broken? The demonstrations in the wake of what still seems to have been a fraudulent election victory for the country’s gruesome incumbent president inspired awe; but as The Economist went to press their size appeared to have sharply dipped. The expression of dissent in rallies in a string of cities around the country seems to have subsided. It is still too soon to say whether some fresh incident may reignite mass anger in the near future, bringing millions back onto the streets, even forcing a rerun of the election. But the authorities, the security forces and their militia thugs, the baseej, sadly seem to have cracked enough heads to squash any immediate hope of setting aside a dodgy election, let alone ending rule by clerical fiat.

However, the courage of millions of ordinary Iranians will not have been in vain. The old establishment has not yet won and the crisis is far from over. That is because the balance of power has shifted against the status quo.

Whatever the true result of the election, it is now plain that there is a vast constituency, even if it is not yet provably a majority, crying out for freedom. Mir Hosein Mousavi, the so-far-thwarted chief challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had been duly vetted by the clerical authorities as a proponent of their rule. But many of the millions who voted for him plainly hoped he would offer more freedom. As the old ruling circle has turned against him, even threatening him with imprisonment, he has boldly refused to bow out.

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